LeT a global security risk, accepts CIA

NEW DELHI: Supporting India's assessment that the Lashkar-e-Toiba is a security risk for the international community, CIA believes that the terror group is among the top security threats for the US.

India has maintained that LeT, which carried out the Mumbai terror attacks, is a global threat and urged the international community to push Pakistan to take action against the terror organisation.

After the Mumbai attacks, this assessment is clearly shared by the US as outgoing CIA chief Michael Hayden concluded that the LeT was among the top security challenges for the US.

Mr Hayden said in a television interview that Al Qaeda has been increasing its links with terror organisations around the world and this was pushing the Lashkar-e-Toiba to expand its scope of operation from India to Israel and America. "There was a migration in Lashkar-e-Toiba thinking over the past 6, 12, 18 months, in which it began to identify the United States and Israel as much as being the main enemy as it has historically identified India.

That is a troubling development. And this migration of Lashkar-e-Toiba to a merge point (with Al Qaeda) is probably taking place," he said. The LeT has traditionally targeted India but during the Mumbai terror attacks, eyewitnesses had recounted how terrorists targeted Israelis and Americans.

As terror groups like the Al Qaeda and LeT share the same jihadi ideology, there is a growing assessment in the intelligence community that links are increasing between these groups.

"As Al Qaeda has become more franchised — whether it is in Yemen or Somalia or in North Africa — you've got other people working, and if these truly are franchises, these aren't people who accept fully operational plans from Al Qaeda central. And therefore, you might see a greater variety of approaches, a greater variety of threats, based upon the thinking of each of these local groups," Mr Hayden said.

Pakistan has been identified by the intelligence community as the epicentre of the jihadi groups. Groups like the Taliban and the Al Qaeda have their safe havens in the tribal belt along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan where the LeT operates out of PoK. The Pakistani government, till now, has been unable to take any action against these groups that have emerged as one of the power centres in Pakistan, according to India's assessment.

The CIA director admitted that Pakistan is in "difficult circumstances" on all fronts. "You do have the after-effects of Mumbai. You do have what is happening in the tribal region. You do have the instability along the Afghan-Pakistan border. You do have very serious economic problems with the Pakistani state... That is a real devils brew of issues," he said, adding that the Zardari government was also trying to establish itself and build a democratic Pakistan.